The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has reportedly adopted a broad interpretation of the Patriot Act, ruling that all the records in a company's database could be considered "relevant to an authorized investigation." The leaked court order compelling a Verizon subsidiary to turn over all its phone records is just one example of how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has interpreted the statute.

Both Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have introduced bills requiring the government to show "specific and articulable facts" demonstrating how records are relevant. Similarly, legislation introduced by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., would require any applications to include an explanation of how any records sought are relevant to an authorized investigation.

A bill from Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., would require the government to petition the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court every time an analyst wants to search telephone metadata. From there, a surveillance court judge would need to find "reasonable, articulable suspicion" that the search is "specifically relevant to an authorized investigation" before approving the application. The legislation would also require the FBI to report monthly to congressional intelligence committees all the searches the analysts made.

Several bills would compel the secret court to release some opinions. The Ending Secret Law Act — both the House and Senate versions — would require the court to declassify all its opinions that include "significant construction or interpretation" of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under current law, the court already submits these "significant" opinions to congressional intelligence committees, so the bill would just require the court to share those documents with the public.

The bills do include an exception if the attorney general decides that declassifying an opinion would threaten national security. In that case, the court would release an unclassified summary of the opinion, or — if even offering a summary of the opinion would pose a national security threat — at least give a report on the declassification process with an "estimate" of how many opinions must remain classified.

4) Change the way Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges are appointed

Current law does not give Congress any power to confirm Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges. Instead, the chief justice of the United States appoints the judges, who all already serve on the federal bench. The judges serve seven-year terms. Chief Justice John Roberts appointed all 11 judges currently serving on the court – ten of whom were nominated to federal courts by Republican presidents.

Alternatively, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., has offered a bill that would let the chief justice appoint three judges and let the House Speaker, the House minority leader, the Senate majority leader, and the Senate minority leader each appoint two judges.

5) Appoint a public advocate to argue before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

Currently, the government officials petitioning the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court do not face an adversarial process. Surveillance targets do not have representation before the court, and they are not notified if a court order is issued for their data.

Two former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges – Judge James Robertson and Judge James Carr – have argued that Congress should appoint a public advocate to counter the government's arguments. Carr wrote in the New York Times, "During my six years on the court, there were several occasions when I and other judges faced issues none of us had encountered before. […]Having lawyers challenge novel legal assertions in these secret proceedings would result in better judicial outcomes."

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has promised to introduce a bill that would provide a "special advocate" to argue on behalf of privacy rights and give "civil society organizations" a chance to respond before the surveillance court issues significant rulings.

The surveillance court can actually invite advocates to argue before the court, as the Supreme Court did when the Obama administration refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act.

"There's nothing in law that would prevent the FISA court from hiring an advocate as an additional advisor to the court, except the need to obtain security clearances for that advocate, which would have to be granted by the executive branch," explained Steven Bradbury, who served as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice from 2005 to 2009.

Bradbury has argued that the surveillance court may not need a permanent public advocate because its legal advisers already fulfill that role.

6) End phone metadata collection on constitutional grounds

The Justice Department has maintained that mass phone metadata collection is "fully consistent with the Fourth Amendment." That reasoning is based on the 1979 Supreme Court decision Smith v. Maryland, where the Court found that the government does not need a warrant based on probable cause to collect phone records. The Court reasoned that whenever you dial a phone number, you voluntarily share that phone number with a telecom, and you can't reasonably expect a right to privacy for information shared with third parties. As a result, the Court ruled that the collection of phone records is not a "search" and does not merit protection under the Fourth Amendment.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has introduced a bill declaring that the Fourth Amendment "shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United States Government to search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause" — effectively shutting down the NSA's phone metadata collection program.

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As we've observed throughout this administration, and even during previous administrations, changes in the United States never happen overnight and change almost never gives us exactly what we want, especially if those demanding changes resort to flailing, unhinged screeching.

On Friday, President Obama will announce a slate of reforms aimed at the National Security Agency's surveillance operations, as well as the FISA Court that oversees it. These changes are expected to be closely related to the recommendations published by the administration's NSA review panel last month. But, predictably, Greenwald and others think the president isn't changing anything.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote to NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander and asked point blank, "Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?" The letter defined spying to also include metadata collection.

For two and a half months now, it seems the Left has been talking about little other than Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. With 11.5 million Americans out of work, the GOP’s war on women continuing and the Supreme Court gutting the Voting Rights Act, aren't there more important things to worry about?

Glenn Greenwald leaned heavily on his overworked panic button yet again on Sunday during an appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. In a rare spoiler, Greenwald revealed the subject of his next bombshell article for The Guardian before it goes live sometime in the coming days.

But let's pretend the minimization process doesn't occur and the NSA had the content of a few of your emails or Facebook chats, and this data included your name and IP address. Fact: this data would be considerably less intrusive than the data that's being held, used and in some cases distributed by unaccountable corporations. Here are eight privately owned entities who have far more information about you than the NSA.

In a video filmed in Hony Kong in which Greenwald interviews Snowden, the former NSA IT analyst claimed, "I sitting at my desk certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone. From you or your accountant to a federal judge to even a president."